Alien, Old-Time Gangs Blamed in Santa Ana’s Turf War

Territorial conflicts between traditional youth gangs and an expanding illegal alien gang known as the Lopers have played a major role in the recent escalation of gang violence in Santa Ana, according to authorities and residents.

“The Lopers have been identified as a major contributor,” Deputy Police Chief Eugene Hansen said. “But I don’t want to lay the whole problem on their doorstep. We’re also talking about . . . other gangs. The shootings are frequently related to a previous incident, but they’re also often random retaliations.”

Since January, there have been 90 gang-related crimes in Santa Ana, including 62 assault and battery incidents, 11 shootings into inhabited dwellings and three murders, according to police. Although much of the violence has been in southeastern Santa Ana, few areas of the city have been immune. Authorities estimate that as many as 10 of the city’s 30 to 35 gangs have been involved.

Patrols Increased

In response, police on Friday announced a crackdown that will include the arrest of older gang members to de-fuse gang leadership. Police have also stepped up street patrols, and they are frequently stopping and questioning suspected gang members.

Residents and community workers say the relatively new Lopers, who once were bullied by old-line street gangs, have grown in number and are expanding their turf. But police say that the Lopers (the name is derived from similarly named street gangs in Tijuana and Mexicali) are paying a high price for their aggression.

A Police Department tally of 12 nonfatal gang shootings that wounded 16 people in June identified Lopers as victims more often than as suspects. Six members of the Lopers gang were wounded in June, taking more casualties than any other gang.

And, as inevitably is the case with gang violence, innocent bystanders were caught in the line of fire. Five times in June alone, non-gang members were struck by gunshots that probably were not intended for them.

“The illegals have always had their gangs and retaliated in the past, but not like now,” said Frank Franklin, an Orange County deputy probation officer who has worked in the Santa Ana area for eight years.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard L. Fredrickson, gang prosecutor in Orange County Juvenile Court, said that “from time to time one gang becomes more active than another for various reason. Lopers are the primary agitators in the county right now.”

The general escalation of gang violence has led to a climate of fear in many Santa Ana neighborhoods, residents say.

“Every night before I go to bed, there is shooting,” said Cindy Hernandez, 25, who lives near the southeastern Santa Ana neighborhood of Delhi, where many of the recent shootings have occurred.

Her sister, Christina Juarez, 21, lives to the northwest, where for decades the F Troop gang has claimed the turf.

“It’s awful every day,” Juarez said. “You hear sirens and shooting. For some reason, it’s getting worse.”

Gang-related graffiti and vandalism have increased. And “for the first time ever we’ve had punched-out stained-glass windows,” said Msgr. Wilbur Davis of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, 727 N. Mentor Ave., but the immediate neighborhood has been relatively free of violence.

Still, he said, “the people around here are afraid to go walking. There are people smoking (marijuana) and there are drug exchanges on the streets.”

“I just anticipate there is going to be more and more gang” problems, Davis said. “When you have large families of people who are poor and living in poor economic conditions caught between cultures, they drop out of school; they don’t have the skills or the confidence to better their situation; they get very bitter and feel very disenfranchised and turn to violence.”

Now, the authorities say, it’s time to take a hard line.

“They’re not going to get away with anything,” said Lt. David Salazar, who heads an anti-gang task force. “We want them to know they can’t operate freely.”

Councilman John Acosta said: “It’s a serious situation, and it’s gotten progressively worse. We had to do something before it got completely out of hand.”

There are others, however, who are taking different approaches.

Several church groups have recently initiated or plan to establish counseling and outreach programs for parents as well as gang members. The county’s first formal gang-diversion program has been established by Turning Point, a social services agency with offices in Garden Grove and Santa Ana. And residents, who for years have suffered the fear and danger of gang warfare, also are acting on their own to halt the bloodshed.

Mary Perez, the mother of Hernandez and Juarez, lives to the west, across Harbor Boulevard in what is known as the 17th Street gang’s area.

Concerned by Violence

“There’s always been danger out there,” said Perez, who also has two teen-age sons. “The parents have to wake up and help their children.”

Concerned by escalating violence, Perez recently went door-to-door inviting her neighbors and their children to view an anti-gang movie shown on the driveway of her 16th Street home. She plans a second meeting July 22 to rally neighborhood residents and come up with a plan.

Youngsters, Perez said, need “someone to talk to . . . a chance to get jobs, a place . . . to go to have sports.”

Only a few blocks away, Cecilia Gonzales works at Figueroa Senior Citizen Center at 5th Street and Harbor Boulevard, in yet another gang’s turf and not far from where on June 10 a motorist was wounded by a grazing gunshot to the head fired from a passing car. Gonzales also intends to do something to divert the city’s youth from gang activity.

“Come next month, I’m going to hold a meeting with community parents,” said Gonzales, a mother of 12 who also has 15 young grandchildren. Teen-agers “just stand out in the street, the poor things. They don’t have a place to go.

‘No Open Doors’

“When you don’t have anything to do, you get desperate. There are no open doors for the kids. They should have a facility to enjoy boxing, classes, electronics, to train for a job.”

There are those who feel that preventive steps must be taken before the youths become attracted to gangs.

“In my opinion,” said Rex Castellaw, Orange County chief deputy probation officer, “primary prevention is likely to produce the most success.

“I think parents have to get involved,” Castellaw said. “It’s very, very difficult for an early adolescent to go it alone. He needs support if he is going to avoid becoming involved in the gang.”

“The best chance you have to cut down on the amount of gang activity is to get in there and prevent or persuade youngsters not to get involved in the gang. It’s very, very difficult because all of these gangs are territorial and there’s tremendous pressure to join up.”

The gang diversion program operated by Turning Point has been in operation for less than a year.

“Simply, what is going on is that there’s a lot of poverty out there,” said the program’s director, Pete Melendez, a 35-year-old former gang member. “And that’s why they are . . . (shooting). There are no recreation programs like what we had in the ‘60s and middle ‘70s.”

Consequences Stressed

Melendez is promoting an approach used by the City of Paramount in Los Angeles County, which through lectures, films and literature provides grade-school youngsters (male and female) with a graphic illustration of the consequences of gang membership.

“I agree with the approach of getting kids when they are young,” prosecutor Fredrickson said. “Once kids get attracted and in (a gang), you can’t do anything with them.”

However, Fredrickson suggested that the “best program of all” is for a gang member to “get a wife and a kid.”

One-time F Trooper Orlando Barela, 28, escaped the gang life and now lives with his wife and two young daughters in Orange. But Barela took a different route. His life was “changed by the power of God,” he said.

Now, as a member of Evangel Temple, a Santa Ana church, Barela returns regularly to his former neighborhood and other Santa Ana barrios.

“My old home boys see me and can’t believe the change in my life,” he said. “I tell them they don’t have to live like that. I don’t worry about who’s going to shoot me in the back anymore. I’m no longer in a gang. I’m in God’s victorious army. I’m a soldier for God.”

Coming Up With Plan

Father Conrad Pytlik of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, 541 E. Central Ave., said a group at his church is in the early stages of “preparing people” to deal with the consequences of gang activity. Rosalio Medrano, president of the parrish council, said the group is about a month away from formulating its plan, but one of the first orders of business will be to lobby for more police patrols to deter gang activity.

Eva Bernal, wife of Pastor Bruce Bernal of Victory Outreach, a church active in preaching the gospel to gang members throughout Santa Ana, said that their effort is a more effective method than punitive approaches or psychological counseling.

Gang members “are proud of where they live and get caught up in this misconception that there are territories to protect, and it gets out of hand,” she said. “But many are crying out for help and it’s like being caught in a web, unable to get out.”

Msgr. Davis of St. Joseph’s said that his church is planning to establish support groups for parents and their children to help deal with the problems caused by gang membership.

“A lot of this comes from poor parental supervision,” he said. “When kids start staying out very late, becoming lethargic and cynical, we want (parents) to come to a support group setting for education on alcohol and drugs and to share the problems with other families.”

Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the county Human Relations Commission, said “early intervention” is the best method to deal with gang affiliation.

‘In a Losing Battle’

“It seems to me you have to prevent it because once you have gangs, you’re in a losing battle,” he said.

But Fausto Reyes, an aide to county Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, said: “When you talk to the experts on how to deal with gangs, everybody will give you a different method. Most of the experts will tell you they (gangs) are not going to go away. The most you can do is reduce the activity.”

Reyes said gang violence can be expected every summer, but “the recent increase has been real drastic. It’s kind of like an out-and-out war.”

Probation officer Franklin is afraid that the worst may be ahead.

“If they don’t do something quickly . . . it’s all-out war on the streets in Santa Ana,”